1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to interactions with terminal devices having a user interface to display information, and more particularly to a method and system for capturing, tracking, storing, augmenting and replaying the displayed information encountered during one or more interactive session, wherein the one or more interactive session involves a series of screen displays.
2. Description of the Related Art
Various information is accessed through wide area networks (WAN) such as the Internet. The content of these wide area networks is dynamic, information is always being added and deleted. Information available at one time may be unavailable at a later time because a user may not save it when it was available or its source may have been deleted, or it may be still available but the user is not quite sure of its location. In other cases, one desires to see how others proceed with interactions with provided information.
Computing devices enable users to interact with various information streams such as interaction with various web sites over the Internet. These interactions are typically achieved via hardware devices including a display device and a user interface (i.e., a keyboard and a pointing device). In order to instruct a computing system to perform a task, a user may type a command on a keyboard or make a selection from a menu or button bar using a pointing device (e.g., a mouse or touch pad). In response to the user""s input, the computing system may display text on the display device, display an image or play a sound, all of which provides an indication to the users of the results of their interaction.
Selectively preserving some of these interactions is akin to transmitting the information associated with a particular interaction from the present to the future. There is therefore a need for information retention, source identification, and processing services associated with the transmitted information from designated terminal devices. Additionally, since this information must be stored for future access, there is also a need for information annotation (i.e., from where, for who and when).
An object of the present invention is to provide a method and system that facilitates an individual, enterprise or business entity to record, store, process and manage information associated with interactions transacted on designated terminal devices. More specifically, individual and sequenced display presentations are captured or recorded and supplemented with associated information such as input control sequences, time stamps, user specific identification information, processing instructions, source information and validation information which may take the form of alpha numeric sequences or machine readable entities either of which may be encrypted.
In an embodiment of the present invention, software agents (resident on a user""s terminal device and/or a remotely accessible server devices) record the activities associated with a given interactive session where that interactive session comprises a series of screen displays and any associated user interface or network activity. The captured information is indexed, processed (i.e., sensitive information may be encrypted and the captured content may be compressed for efficient storage) and stored for future access (i.e., replay or playback) either on the initiating terminal device or a designated remote server device. Additionally, since source addressing information is retained with the captured information, future modifications to source files associated with the captured information may also be tracked either offline or upon request.
The present invention can be implemented in numerous forms. Different implementations of the present invention yield one or more of the following advantages. One advantage of the invention is that an effective digital tracking system is provided to track device interactions (i.e., screen activity over a period of time and associated input and network interactions) associated with user interactions with various information streams accessible through a network such as the Internet or an Intranet. This capturing process may be activated automatically or may be initiated by the user as desired. Another advantage of the present invention is that the captured information can be processed (i.e., encryption, compression) augmented by time stamps, user specific information (i.e., electronic signatures) and validation information which may take the form of alpha-numeric character strings or machine readable entities which may be encrypted. Still another advantage of the present invention is the captured information may be stored and managed on initiating terminal device and/or remotely on a designated server device for future reference.